validation by the companies who had written the policies was staggering.
“One and a half million dollars . . .”
Detective Larry Marx discovered that Susan Powell had opened a safe deposit box at the Wells Fargo bank on West Amelia Earhart Drive in Salt Lake City. It was in her name only and no one else could open it, and yet she had accessed the box only twice. Ellis Maxwell reviewed and evaluated what was in the safe deposit box.
There was a folded letter inside, addressed to her “family and friends.” It was stapled securely all around the edges. Inside, Susan wrote a warning that the contents should never be shown or given to Josh, adding: “I don’t trust him.”
The letter was titled “Last Will and Testament for Susan Powell,” and it was dated June 28, 2008, almost eighteen months earlier.
Susan wrote that Josh Powell, her husband, had threatened to “destroy me” if they should ever get divorced. If that happened, she knew that her children would have neither a mother or a father.
She wrote that they had been having marital problems for the prior four years—which meant the trouble had begun in 2004, shortly after they had moved to Utah. She asked that if something should happen to her, whoever read this letter should contact her sister-in-law, Jennifer Graves.
Susan also stated that if she should die and it looked like an accident, someone should investigate. “It may not be an accident—even if it looks like one.”
* * *
As Susan’s disappearance moved to the top of the headlines and nightly news in the Salt Lake area, one man who had attended a Wells Fargo Christmas gathering of Susan’s fellow employees and their spouses in December 2008 recalled talking to Josh at that event. His wife, Amber, worked with Susan, and Scott Hardman strived to be polite, but, like many of Susan’s friends, Hardman avoided being stuck with Josh. Josh loved to argue and debate about almost anything. Their 2008 conversation hadn’t seemed that ominous at the time, but now Scott Hardman watched the barrage of media bulletins about Susan’s disappearance and felt uneasy. He called the West Valley City police and was put through to detective Larry Marx.
Marx interviewed Hardman, taking notes. Scott recalled talking with Josh Powell a year before Susan disappeared. Somehow they had gotten on the topic of fictional television crime shows. Josh, who watched a lot of television, held forth on how he visualized the perfect murder and that he knew how to get away with it. The subject turned to how a killer could hide a victim’s body where it would never be discovered.
Not exactly a Christmas cheer discussion, but that was Josh. Hardman couldn’t remember just what method of murder Josh would employ, but he did recall where Josh would hide a body.
Hardman told Detective Marx that Josh had pontificated that an abandoned mine shaft would be the ideal place to dispose of a corpse. All one would have to do would be to throw a body in, knock some of the surface shaft timbers and rocks loose, and the deep hole would collapse in upon itself, burying everything on the bottom.
“No detectives are going to risk their necks going down inside a mine like that,” Josh said. “It would be too dangerous. There are a lot of abandoned mines in the west desert, but the police wouldn’t take a chance on looking there.”
Detectives Marx and Maxwell knew how perilous such a search would be. A conservative estimate of the number of old mines in Utah is between fifteen thousand to twenty thousand! Most of them have been scoured clean of coal, copper, garnets, or other minerals, and some of them are still burning at the bottom. The Utah Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program is striving to fill mines in, or at least place grates or fences around the openings on the surface. By 2012, they hoped to have blocked entrance to at least six thousand deserted mine shafts.
If anyone stumbles into these mines, they will
“One and a half million dollars . . .”
Detective Larry Marx discovered that Susan Powell had opened a safe deposit box at the Wells Fargo bank on West Amelia Earhart Drive in Salt Lake City. It was in her name only and no one else could open it, and yet she had accessed the box only twice. Ellis Maxwell reviewed and evaluated what was in the safe deposit box.
There was a folded letter inside, addressed to her “family and friends.” It was stapled securely all around the edges. Inside, Susan wrote a warning that the contents should never be shown or given to Josh, adding: “I don’t trust him.”
The letter was titled “Last Will and Testament for Susan Powell,” and it was dated June 28, 2008, almost eighteen months earlier.
Susan wrote that Josh Powell, her husband, had threatened to “destroy me” if they should ever get divorced. If that happened, she knew that her children would have neither a mother or a father.
She wrote that they had been having marital problems for the prior four years—which meant the trouble had begun in 2004, shortly after they had moved to Utah. She asked that if something should happen to her, whoever read this letter should contact her sister-in-law, Jennifer Graves.
Susan also stated that if she should die and it looked like an accident, someone should investigate. “It may not be an accident—even if it looks like one.”
* * *
As Susan’s disappearance moved to the top of the headlines and nightly news in the Salt Lake area, one man who had attended a Wells Fargo Christmas gathering of Susan’s fellow employees and their spouses in December 2008 recalled talking to Josh at that event. His wife, Amber, worked with Susan, and Scott Hardman strived to be polite, but, like many of Susan’s friends, Hardman avoided being stuck with Josh. Josh loved to argue and debate about almost anything. Their 2008 conversation hadn’t seemed that ominous at the time, but now Scott Hardman watched the barrage of media bulletins about Susan’s disappearance and felt uneasy. He called the West Valley City police and was put through to detective Larry Marx.
Marx interviewed Hardman, taking notes. Scott recalled talking with Josh Powell a year before Susan disappeared. Somehow they had gotten on the topic of fictional television crime shows. Josh, who watched a lot of television, held forth on how he visualized the perfect murder and that he knew how to get away with it. The subject turned to how a killer could hide a victim’s body where it would never be discovered.
Not exactly a Christmas cheer discussion, but that was Josh. Hardman couldn’t remember just what method of murder Josh would employ, but he did recall where Josh would hide a body.
Hardman told Detective Marx that Josh had pontificated that an abandoned mine shaft would be the ideal place to dispose of a corpse. All one would have to do would be to throw a body in, knock some of the surface shaft timbers and rocks loose, and the deep hole would collapse in upon itself, burying everything on the bottom.
“No detectives are going to risk their necks going down inside a mine like that,” Josh said. “It would be too dangerous. There are a lot of abandoned mines in the west desert, but the police wouldn’t take a chance on looking there.”
Detectives Marx and Maxwell knew how perilous such a search would be. A conservative estimate of the number of old mines in Utah is between fifteen thousand to twenty thousand! Most of them have been scoured clean of coal, copper, garnets, or other minerals, and some of them are still burning at the bottom. The Utah Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program is striving to fill mines in, or at least place grates or fences around the openings on the surface. By 2012, they hoped to have blocked entrance to at least six thousand deserted mine shafts.
If anyone stumbles into these mines, they will
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